_{Cover of the October 2001 issue of PC World}

PC World was one of the most popular PC specific magazines for decades. The magazine began life in March 1983 and the last issue was published a little over 30 years later in 2013. It was still going strong in 2001 and the October 2001 issue includes:

Cover Story

PC Deals: You Better Shop Around - A guide to the best and worst places to buy a PC both in store and online. Ranked highest in this list is Gateway Country.

Features

CD-RW ASAP - A test of 30 of the latest CD burners. The latest generations burn at speeds of up to 24x whereas the previous generation were limited to 8x. Coming in at the top of the list is the Yamaha LightSpeed CRW2200EZ.

Better Burning - A look at five of the most popular CD burning software packages including Ahead Nero Burning ROM 5.5, NTI CD-Maker Professional Edition, Oak Technology SimpliCD 1.0, Roxio Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum, and Stomp Click'N Burn Pro 2.0.

Easy Steps to a Great Site - Tips, tricks, and tools to help you create a home page.

New Life for Old PCs - A guide to donating your old PC to charity. At this time, you might have been upgrading to a new 1 GHz+ Pentium III or Pentium 4 and would have likely been upgrading from something like a five year old Pentium or slightly newer Pentium II.

_{Table of Contents from the October 2001 issue of PC World}

Top 100

Top 10 Power PCs - At the top of this list is the Dell OptiPlex GX400 featuring a P4-1400 CPU and 256MB of RDRAM for $2245. In addition to Pentium 4 systems, there were also several Athlon 1400 systems in this list.

Top 10 Value PCs - The top system in this list is a Dell OptiPlex GX150 featuring a 933 MHz Pentium III for $1400. There is at least one Duron based system in this list. The first PC I ever built myself had a Duron processor.

Top 15 Notebook PCs - At the top of the power notebook list is the Dell Inspiron 8000 for $2295 which features a Pentium III 900/700 CPU, 128MB of RAM, and a 20GB hard drive. The ThinkPad T22 comes in second and the Gateway Solo 9500 third. At the top of the Value Notebook list is the Dell Inspiron 4000 featuring a Pentium III 900/700 CPU, 128MB RAM, and 10GB hard drive for $1637.

Top 15 Home PCs - The top power system is the MicronPC Millennia Max XP2 featuring an Athlon 1400 CPU, 256MB DDR SDRAM, a 60 GB hard drive and VisionTek GeForce 3 graphics card for $2397. My favorites in this list are the Alienware Aurora DDR in third and the Gateway Select 1400 in 4th. The top value system is the HP Pavilion 9820 featuring a Pentium III-1000, 128MB SDRAM, a 60GB hard drive, and an Asus AGP-V7700 GeForce2 GTS Pro graphics card for $1299.

Top 10 21-inch Monitors - At the top of this list of 21-inch CRT monitors is the Optiquest Q115 with a 19.6 viewable display area for $578.

Top 10 Graphic Boards - The top graphics card this month is the CardExert GeForce2 MX TwinView/Vivo Golden Sample for $159.

Top 10 Digital Cameras - The best digital camera according to PC World was the Nikon Coolpix 995, a 3.34 megapixel camera for $899.

_{Table of Contents from the October 2001 issue of PC World (continued)}

Departments

Up Front - A look at the magazine's new star rating system.

Letters - Letters from readers about product activation, license agreements, copy protection, flat panel displays, and more.

Consumer Watch - Choosing an e-payment service, problems with a refurbished PC, and more.

Web Savvy - A look at Upromise, a free online service to help you save for college.

Home Office - A guide to fighting spyware.

Full Discolsure - A look at bus, memory, hard drive, and internet bottlenecks.

News & Trends

XP's Extras - Microsoft continues its trend of adding features to the OS that once were only available via third party utilities.

Pentium 4 Races to 2 GHz - The Pentium 4 catches up to the Athlon but at a price premium.

Focus on the Big Pixels - A look at new 4 and 5 megapixel cameras.

USB: The Sequel - USB 2.0 promises speeds up to 40 times faster than USB 1.

New Products - New notebooks including the Gateway Solo 1200, Sony Vaio PCG-Sr33, and HP Omnibook 6100; personal finance software including Quicken 2002 and Microsoft Money 2002; PDA wi-fi add-ons; InFocus LP290 and Lightware Legend LS-8 projectors; and much more.

Here's How

Internet Tips - Tips to stop browser pop-ups, capture shockwave animations for offline viewing, and improving AOL's graphics.

Step-By-Step - A guide to creating your first website including using web page editors like Microsoft FrontPage and Netscape Composer, getting a host for your web site, and obtaining and using a basic FTP client.